Five Kingfisher Airlines flights cancelled

New Delhi, Apr 2: At least five Kingfisher Airlines flights out of Mumbai and Delhi were cancelled on Monday as a section of staff did not report for duty to demand immediate payment of salary and allowance backlog.

As some pilots and other staff did not report for work to press for their demands, a meeting between the protestors and the airline's top management was urgently convened at a hotel in suburban Mumbai to resolve the situation.

While flight information display boards in Delhi showed that Kingfisher's services to Dehradun, Shimla and Chandigarh were cancelled, services from Mumbai to Bhuj and Jamnagar were also cancelled, airport sources said.

Airline sources said Kingfisher promoter Vijay Mallya has written a letter to all employees promising them that all junior staff, including ground handlers and security personnel, would be paid their dues before Apr 4, while all pilots and engineers would be paid on Apr 9 and 10.

The bank accounts of the cash-strapped airline, which were frozen by tax authorities for non-payment of taxes and other charges, were unfrozen on Sunday, after Kingfisher paid Rs 64 crore to them.

The debt-laden carrier has terminated operations to 28 of its 56 destinations over the past few days and asked about 40 -50% of its staff to stay at home till further orders.

However, it had said it was not laying off employees as a result of closure of a large number of stations, including the metros of Kolkata and Hyderabad.

In a statement last week, it had said it was undertaking a "holding plan" till such time it was fully capitalised. "Since we could resume operations after getting re-capitalised, most staff at these stations have been asked to stay at home whilst remaining on the company's rolls."

Kingfisher, which has a debt of $1.3 billion, is under pressure from its lenders to inject equity.